You've already done that by claiming that most juries aren't reasonable. Your only basis for that is that they reach a verdict that differs from your opinion.
They are supposed to be, that's the whole point of having juries, that they will look at the evidence in an unbiased manner and come to a conclusion based on the evidence. That's what being rational is. Unfortunately there are far too many juries we can point to which do not act rationally, they have preconceived notions and conclusions based on emotion, not intellect, where they only pay attention to evidence that supports their preconceived conclusion and ignore the rest. In that, they work pretty much like religions.
How do you know what people are thinking?
Clearly they have to tell us. Luckily, there are lots of people who have no problem explaining what they think at the drop of a hat.
Why? Do you require objective, demonstrable, producible evidence before deciding who you will fall in love with?
No, that's an emotional state based on brain chemistry. It is, by definition, irrational. However, you should consider a lot of other factors objectively and demonstrably before you make any rational decisions about wanting to spend your life with this person. That's why the divorce rate is so high, most people never stop to consider the actual ramifications of spending the rest of their lives with an individual, they only go with the chemical high. That's a problem.
Opinions are ****-poor for determining actual reality. Opinions based solely on emotion don't actually get you anywhere demonstrably real. They're doing the same thing that people who get married just because they feel good are doing. Maybe that explains why the religious get divorced at a rate much higher than atheists.
I once told an atheist that I didn't believe in G-d when I was younger and considered myself an atheist at the time. He told me that since I currently believe in G-d that I was never a "true" atheist back then.
I can't respond to what someone else says, other than to say I consider him wrong. Anyone who doesn't believe in a god, any god, is an atheist. That doesn't mean they're a rational atheist, one who has come up with reasons why they reject the claims of the religious. Every baby born is, by definition, an atheist because they don't pop out of the womb believing in gods. That doesn't put babies on the same intellectual level as well-educated atheists who have studied religion for years and found it to be bunk.
How can this be true of everyone, when many people myself included, are claiming that we know G-d exists? Now your opinion takes precedence over everyone else's? Are you the only rational person?
But you don't know anything. You are claiming it. You cannot know God exists because you cannot provide any evidence whatsoever that God is actually real. Knowledge is not "I have an extraordinary amount of faith." That's not what knowledge is. Knowledge requires some demonstrable and rational basis in reality. You've got to be able to back up where you got this supposed knowledge. Christians claim to have "knowledge" that God is real. Hindus claim to have "knowledge" that Vishnu is real. Every religion claims to "know" their gods are real, yet every other religion discounts that claim of "knowledge" for one of their own. If there was any actual knowledge of God, there would be a massive amount of objective evidence supporting it. There isn't.
That's silly. Most people are rational and have many reasons to support their beliefs. To state that beliefs must be limited to physical evidence is irrational.
"Having a reason" and "being rational" are two different things. To be rational requires that you use the established laws of logic to construct proper arguments, using objective evidence. It doesn't mean that coming up with any cockamamie excuse to believe a proposition is rational. The problem here is that you people don't have the slightest clue how to use the terminology that you're using, you're just making claims because you think it makes your beliefs look better without having any idea what your statements really mean. If you are going to use "rational" in your arguments, you need to be able to back up your claims using the laws of logic and critical thinking and you can't. All you're doing is throwing around word salad.
Emotional and Rational are not antonyms. Most people are both emotional and rational, we are people. I suppose it makes you feel superior to call everyone that disagrees with you irrational.
There is a time and a place for being emotional, certainly, but that is not all the time and everyplace. This has nothing to do with superiority, it has everything to do with being factually correct. Words have meanings for a reason. If you use the words incorrectly, as you are doing with "rational", then the person who is wrong is you. When you find out that you're wrong, the only proper course of action is to correct it. I suspect you will not do so.
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